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Is It Feasible For Us To Put Down 20% For A Home?

The home ownership bug has hit me as of late. This is a dangerous thing, apparently, as many hours of my day are spent looking at housing calculators, reading up about different types of mortgages, and most procastinating-ly, looking at various properties in Chicago (those virtual tours devour my lunch hour).

I know I know – we are SO not in a position to buy a home. But hear me out.

We’ll be credit card debt free in less than two years, freeing up about $1,000 a month for us. By that time we’ll be married, and we will have a nice chunk of wedding money and other money saved up – by my estimates around $20,000. (EDIT: Please note that the $20,000 is coming from wedding gifts and OTHER SAVINGS. My parents have comitted to giving us a $10,000 gift for our wedding, so there’s where half of it comes from.) Because we’re faithfully paying off the credit card debt, we’ll have excellent credit scores by then as well.

A decent 2 bedroom condo in Chicago runs about $300,000, so a 20% down payment on that home would be $60,000. That is a considerable chunk of change, especially when we already have a mortgage worth of student debt to pay off.

Is it feasible to drop 20% down considering our financial situation? What alternatives would you recommend?

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